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Dishonored - Everyone's GOTY - I don't get it

Dishonored. Every gamer out there talks about this game like it's the greatest thing. So I went ahead and picked it up. I had pretty high hopes for this game. Granted there are some great parts to it. It's really nice how you can teleport around like Nightcrawler. That's cool. But there's one thing that really, really bugs me about this game.

The game gives you the most awesome killing implements; you've got your sword, a gun, some traps, some skills that let you summon an army of rats, a wind spell like Skyrim's FUS ROH DAH! and many more...

...and ten minutes into the game, the game tells you that YOU CAN'T KILL ANYONE.

What the hell is this?

OK to be very clear, the game actually tells you that you have to have a low body count or else you will get a 'dark' ending.

Why would they do this? I mean, seriously. Why tell the player, no, why punish the player for playing however they like? Yeah well I don't really know what the game means by 'darker ending' but it sure discourages you from using those awesome skills listed in your in-game menu. It just limits your options. It's an annoying feeling because there are a lot of scenarios where a cool assassination might be good to do....but you always have that nagging feeling that every time you kill some hapless guard, the game will get worse for you. Killing increases the number of rats in the world and also adds some freakish monsters to the world's city. So it's really discouraging to even use any of the available super skills to deal out some damage and actually feel powerful.

It's an annoying thing that's just in the game, and doesn't make an iota of sense. Give player an arsenal...AND NOT ALLOW THEM TO USE IT! Talk about trolling.

"I'm going to put this Bazooka right here in front of you. Now here's a tank. Destroy it....but DON'T USE THE BAZOOKA. What. The...."

Well, so there. In other aspects the game is just OK; i think they were going for an Assassin's Creed + Bioshock feeling with this game. It succeeds to some extent though i wish they would branch out how you get a 'darker' ending or not, not through stopping the player from using the available options. Maybe they could have just given you decision points throughout the game that determined the course of the ending (no, no, not the way Mass Effect did it with A, B, C choices at the end where you can just save and load the final save and see all the endings, which is lame....they should spread out the choices throughout the game so you will need to play the entire thing again to see all the endings. Why don't developers make their games this way?)

I haven't finished the game yet. I already heard the ending kinda sucks (rumors on forums) so I'm a bit prepared for the inevitable 'Thanks for Playing!' message. The storyline is...just OK, not terribly mindblowing and there are some bizarre elements to it so far. Maybe they'll explain it later on, but there's some type of magical entity that gave you those killing powers and somehow it's related to all the rats appearing in the world, something like that. They were going for "original storyline" with this one....and it just ends up a bit strange. I don't entirely hate it but I have difficulty really sympathizing with the 'good guys' in the game, they just seem like a generic 'rebel group' a'la Star Wars or something.

The one cool thing so far in the game, is this disembodied, bio-mechanical 'heart' item that you have in your inventory. Point it at any NPC and it gives you some voiceover / backstory for that NPC. It also gives you backstory on the environments if you point it at that, too. It's a bit overly grave/dark/Tim Burton-esque at times, though, but i think that's the theme they were going for, anyway.

So I'll pass judgment until i finally finish this game. For now, it just sucks that I'm a bad-ass in this game with all these killer moves, and I can't even use them without ruining my character's storyline somehow. It's a big deal to me, so yeah.

UPDATE: Finally finished it. Not worth writing a whole new post about the ending. It's horrible!

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